I officially joined Salesforce as a React Native developer on January 19th, 2026. The timing was pure luck—they urgently needed React Native devs, and someone from their recruiting team reached out to me out of the blue. I agreed to the interview, and thankfully, I was prepared enough to clear it.

But the real question is why I left my previous company, Hugosave.

Money was never the issue. I left because the work culture and the way people were treated had deteriorated. The company I joined in my early days was gone. Work wasn’t planned properly by upper management, timelines were unrealistic, and working weekends became an expected norm. The leadership—specifically Vijay, Khaleel, and Surya—started making false commitments and setting impossible timelines that meant nothing.

It got worse when Anurag was promoted to lead. He became a classic “yes boss” guy—never pushing back against management, playing office politics, and agreeing to work at 2 or 3 AM without question. Unfortunately, he expected the same from us. I got singled out and ended up working entirely as an individual contributor (IC) without junior engineers to collaborate with, which I hated.

The interns had it the worst. They were kept under the constant threat of being fired if they didn’t work extended hours. It became common practice to assign them a bug fix at 8 PM and demand a PR merged by the next morning. It felt like bonded labor. Our dignity and our right to a personal life outside the office were fading fast. That’s when I knew I couldn’t stay.

I wasn’t predetermined to join Salesforce or any other specific company. I hadn’t even applied anywhere. Salesforce contacted me in November, I gave the interview, cracked it, and joined.

The interview experience was surprisingly good. Because of their urgent need, the difficulty level was reasonable. I told my HR, Sindhu, upfront that I wasn’t prepared for HackerRank-style competitive coding rounds. She agreed to bypass the online coding test and moved me straight to the next phases. I had three rounds:

1. DSA: Taken by Madhav Sahu. LeetCode medium-level string and object manipulation.
2. System Design: Taken by Vardan Sharma (who is now my senior on the team). We designed a social media news feed.
3. Hiring Manager: Taken by Rajeev Jain. This stretched to 2.5 hours and was the most physically and mentally exhausting round. Rajeev asked a lot of behavioral questions to check culture fit. By the end, I was about 60% sure I got it because I knew I gave the answers they were looking for.

Onboarding was unlike anything I’ve experienced. They dedicated the first two days entirely to system setup, which was incredibly considerate. The next two days were in-office onboarding with presentations about Salesforce’s products and initiatives. We also had a fun group activity where I got to make friends with other new joiners.

As for the work now? I’m really liking it. The scope isn’t as broad or complex as what I built at HugoHub, but it’s a nice change of pace to work in a smaller codebase. What’s interesting is how heavily they rely on AI here. They gave us a generous Claude Code subscription, and my development speed has 3x’ed.

I love the team, the people, and the free food. I’m also really grateful for the smaller perks: a height-adjusting desk, ANC headphones, an iPhone, a top-end MacBook Pro, and a corporate AmEx card.

Do I miss Hugosave? Sometimes. During my initial days, Surya was a great mentor. He has a brilliant engineering mind, and I miss working with that version of him. But by 2025, that changed. I ended up working under management that didn’t inspire or teach me. I do occasionally miss the complexity of the HugoHub codebase, the incredibly creative design team, and the interns I mentored—they were the hardest-working group I’ve ever seen.

But apart from that? I don’t miss anything else. Good riddance.